\n<\/p>\n
Guest lists for White House state dinners have always been political rather than social documents. Chewing eagerly in Washington, he relayed the administration’s priorities, favorite businesses, top donors and media aides. It is believed that they reflect the honor of the country.<\/p>\n
By those standards, the Trump guest list for Tuesday night’s state dinner for Britain’s King Charles III and Queen Camilla was another blow to norms in an administration that loves to break them.<\/p>\n
The more than 100 guests included at least 10 American billionaires, six Fox News hosts, a Fox News executive, six conservative Supreme Court justices, several Silicon Valley tech giants and assorted friends of the president. There were no British cultural figures and the number of British people overall was very small. The British Embassy in Washington appears to have had limited input into the guest list.<\/p>\n
There also were no Democratic politicians there, as has been the case at other Trump state dinners.<\/p>\n
Previous White House social secretaries took note.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
“There has been no effort to reach out to the other side,” said Gahel Hodges Burt, who served as White House social secretary for three years in the Reagan administration. “There are no clergy, no minority group representatives, no medical researchers, no vaccine developers. And I would have had the astronauts who just came back.”<\/p>\n
Still, she said, “It’s an impressive group. And a group you’d expect.”<\/p>\n
It is unclear who compiled the guest list, which is typically overseen by the White House social secretary, with heavy input from the West Wing, White House political operations and the White House’s liaison to Congress. First lady Melania Trump has not had a social secretary in her husband’s second term.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday his press secretary, Nick Clemens, declined to comment on the guest list or how it was prepared.<\/p>\n
Jeremy Bernard, who was White House social secretary in the Obama administration, said his goal was to reflect America in the guest list. Of Trump’s list, he said, “It doesn’t seem like there was any effort made to make it look like America as a whole.” “It’s more reflective of the American right.”<\/p>\n
In Mr. Trump’s first term, he said, he would talk to Anna Christina Niketa Lloyd, the social secretary at the time. “She would call me up and say, ‘Hey, we’re having dinner in the Rose Garden. Tell me about the dinner you had in the Rose Garden.’ And I’ll tell him about the lighting company. We shared stuff. There is no such person now.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Most of the British guests on the list were members of the official entourage traveling from London, including Clive Alderton, principal private secretary to the king and queen, and Tobin Andrea, the royal household’s director of communications. Other British guests included Camilla’s son-in-law Harry Lopes and her grandson Otis Irwin.<\/p>\n
It also included British tabloid veteran Keith Poole, now editor-in-chief of The New York Post; Ruth Porat, British American chairwoman and chief investment officer of Alphabet and Google; and Northern Irish golfer Rory McIlroy, who just won his second Masters.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Tina Brown, a British American journalist and former editor of The New Yorker and Vanity Fair who regularly criticizes the Trump administration in her “Fresh Hell” Substack column (and who, needless to say, was not included on the guest list), called the document “an absolute classic.” In other words, he said, “It’s the capitalists, the money, the conservative Supreme Court justices.” He thought it would be good to include English actress Helen Mirren and English historian Simon Schama.<\/p>\n
Michael LaRosa, who was press secretary to former first lady Jill Biden, was of the view that the Democratic White House was no different from the current one in its partisan positioning. \u201cObama invited liberal reporters and opinion writers, and we invited the whole MSNBC crowd and Nancy Pelosi and her daughter,\u201d said Mr. LaRosa, who now works for Ballard Partners, a lobbying firm run by a top Trump fund-raiser.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Of the guest list for the King and Queen’s dinner, he said, “I didn’t find it unusual. It struck me as par for the course. I always think about these things in terms of internal politics. Which donor do we need for the next cycle? Who isn’t getting tender love and care?”<\/p>\n
Notable names on the Trump guest list included Paramount chief executive David Ellison; Amazon founder Jeff Bezos; Blackstone Group Chief Executive Steve Schwarzman; and BP Chief Executive Meg O’Neill.<\/p>\n
In 2007, George W. Guests at a state dinner for Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip during the Bush administration included Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, who was then Speaker of the House; ABC’s Robin Roberts; and British historian Martin Gilbert.<\/p>\n
katie robertson Contributed reporting from New York.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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